March 14, 2008
guadec
2 Comments
After my proposal to guadec-list got a decent response, I think it’s fair to say that we’re good to go for a GUADEC table quiz!
The table quiz will be one of the social events during GUADEC, I’ll be recruiting people to help with questions, corrections and livening up things. The details, obviously, all need to be worked out.
For those of you from Ireland and the UK, you probably already know what a table quiz is (also known coincidentally as a pub quiz – probably because of the participation of the public). For the rest of you, here’s the skinny.
People organise themselves into teams of 5 or 6 people, who then give themselves a team name to go with their table number. The quiz is organised in rounds of 10 questions, and I think we’ll run 5 or 6 rounds. Between rounds, fun and frolics can be expected with spot prizes, and fun will be had by all. Or else.
March 12, 2008
General
2 Comments
I just watched the presentation on the Microsoft Office ribbon that Miguel pointed to earlier and I have to agree with him that it’s a great presentation on application design methodology, well worth watching. There a related series of articles on the UI design in Jensen Harris’s blog which is also worth reading (at least, so far).
Some amazing stuff in the article in particular was the amount of data collection they have done over the years – millions of clicks and keystrokes, yielding some surprising results that reinforce once more the lesson “we are not our users” (striking example: 80% of people save by clicking the floppy disk in the toolbar, only 20% of saves happen with the Ctrl-S keystroke).
I spotted a familiar voice doing some fanboying at 1:22:43 or so 🙂
March 12, 2008
freesoftware, gimp, libre graphics meeting
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That’s the only question I can think of when I come across this gem, from the wiki page collecting demos for Libre Graphics Meeting 2006 (I’ve put an archive of the old LGM page back online, minus the MySQL database which had the news items):
So, you’re an artist, and your favourite program (or combination of programs) isn’t in the programme. Why not offer yourself up as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of demos?
In Greek mythology, Deimos was the god of dread or panic, which seems strangely appropriate.
The word demonstration comes from the latin demonstrare, to explain completely. Monstrare in turn comes from monstrum, meaning “divine omen or wonder”. So we can think of a demonstration as a demystification.
The word shares its roots with monster, meaning something we don’t understand.
So demonstrations are dreadful affairs where we demystify monsters.
If you feel up to the task of scaring off other people’s monsters with a big flashlight, sign up here to give a demo. It could be as simple as using Blender to create an animation, or as complicated as drawing a square in the GIMP.
Can’t remember what I was up to when I wrote that, but it must have been late…
March 10, 2008
gnome
2 Comments
I just ordered a hard copy of the GNOME annual report (PDF) from lulu.com. At €9.05 postage included it’s a little pricy for a 24 page printed document, so I’m expecting top quality. I almost backed out when I saw the final bill, but I figured that a good chunk of that is going to the foundation, so what the hell, I’m a happy guy. Congratulations to Lucas and all the others who made this possible this year. I’m honoured to have been listed in the credits, given that I did so little this year to help.
Important update: I just heard back from Lucas that the reports are being printed at cost at Lulu; so €6 is the cost of printing the thing (€3 delivery on top for Europe), and nothing is going to the foundation. Also, lulu doesn’t cancel orders under any circumstances. Not saying that you shouldn’t buy it, only that you should only do so if you think it’s decent value for money.
